


the end of the world as we know it (and i feel fine)

by saiditallbefore



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Loki Wins, Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Canon-Typical Violence, Comic Book Science, Gen, Mentions of Canon Relationships, the one where Loki wins at the end of Avengers but my ladies fuck shit up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23109022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/pseuds/saiditallbefore
Summary: She’d failed.  They all had.Loki had won.-The Avengers lost the Battle of New York.But not everyone is ready to give up.
Relationships: Jane Foster & Darcy Lewis, Laura Barton & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	1. JANE

**Author's Note:**

> I've been poking at this idea on and off for 3+ years. Large portions of it have been thoroughly jossed by canon, but I still like the idea.
> 
> This is probably going to be more of a series of connected snippets (posted as I write them) than a story with an actual plot.

SHIELD had shipped her off to Norway to keep her safe. Turned out, nowhere was safe.

“Jane, we gotta go _now_!” Darcy yelled.

Jane looked up from her laptop, where she was transferring all her most important data onto a memory stick, and wiping all of her drives. “I’m not leaving my equipment!”

“Look, Jane—” Darcy began, probably getting ready to reason with her.

“I don’t mean take it with us,” Jane interrupted. “But I’m not letting anyone else have it.” She held out a bottle of propylene oxide that her lab partner, an astrochemist, had been using. “Here. It’s highly flammable.”

Darcy gave her a grin that might have scared even the aliens. Jane tried to smile back, and pulled a hammer out of the toolbox, then promptly went to work smashing her equipment until it was unrecognizable. Sure, if Loki was anything like Thor (and that thought _hurt_ ), he’d seen more advanced equipment everyday growing up. But that didn’t mean he knew how to create his own Einstein-Rosen bridges. 

On Earth, only Jane and Erik knew how to do that. Well, sort of. She didn’t quite have the making them part down. 

But she knew the theory.

She hoped Erik was somewhere safe. 

Meanwhile, she smashed what was left of her homemade equipment to pieces, and Darcy poured flammable chemicals over it.

Jane lit a match, and tossed it onto the debris.

When the others came back to the lab tomorrow morning, their work would be gone. Jane felt a twinge of guilt about that. Maybe it had been selfish to destroy their life’s work to keep her own safe.

But it was too late to fix it now. And it was more than just her work— if Loki could replicate it, could create an Einstein-Rosen bridge, Earth wouldn’t be the only world in danger.

Darcy had already started the car they’d “borrowed” from their hosts. Jane climbed in the passenger seat, and they were off.

Overhead, giant silver things sailed through the sky— still light at this time, here in Norway. Jane watched them, trying to decide if they were ships or another species of alien. The footage of the Battle of New York hadn’t been clear enough to tell. 

Aliens, she decided, after watching for a few minutes. The way they snaked through the sky certainly pointed to them being alive. She couldn’t imagine engineering, human or otherwise, that could recreate that kind of movement. Then again, she wasn’t an engineer. It was entirely possible that someone like Tony Stark could make something like that. And if he could, then who was to say what aliens could do?

Thoughts of what had happened in New York swelled in her, and Jane ruthlessly shoved them away. If she let herself think about New York and Iron Man and Loki, she’d start wondering about Thor.

Instead, she let herself think about the portal that was now over New York. Where did it go? Another universe, or another part of their universe? She’d gleaned from Thor _(don’t think about it don’t think about it)_ that Asgard and the other worlds on Yggdrasil’s tree were in other dimensions. She was working on a theory on interdimensional travel versus interstellar travel, to go along with her research on Einstein-Rosen bridges, but it wasn’t fully developed yet.

With that on her mind, Jane grabbed a notebook and pencil out of her bag and began sketching out her most recently revised equations for her Einstein-Rosen bridge.

* * *

By the time the sun came up, they were in Sweden. Darcy was playing a Swedish pop station at full volume, claiming it kept her awake. Jane’s head was pounding, but she preferred that to Darcy driving them off the side of the road— and Darcy refused to let her drive anymore after she’d been working all night. Not after what happened in New Mexico.

She was too tired to shove the thoughts of Thor aside this time. He’d been in New York. The footage had been blurry, and she’d watched it on a small screen, but there was no mistaking him.

She’d lost track of him after Iron Man had redirected a missile away from New York and into the portal to space. Most people had stopped filming after that. Jane couldn’t blame them-- she’d have run, too. 

She said as much to Darcy. 

“No,” Darcy said, turning the Swedish pop down to a manageable volume. “You’d have stood there, gawking at that stupid portal until I dragged you somewhere safe.” She’d sighed, and for a few minutes the only noise was the song on the radio. The words were foreign, but the tune was upbeat and bubbly and entirely incongruous with Jane’s mood. 

“You think my taser works on aliens?” Darcy finally said.

Jane furrowed her brows. “I don’t see why not. It worked on Thor, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, but he was all depowered and shit.”

Jane thought about it. “I’m not sure if it would work on Thor, since Mjolnir seems to harness lightning somehow.” And she was just dying to know how that worked, but it seemed unlikely she’d ever find out. “But assuming these aliens have approximately the same mass as a human, and the same reactivity to electricity— it should work.”

Darcy cocked her head to the side. “That’s a lot of assumptions.”

“It’s a working theory.” 

Darcy laughed, and Jane smiled slightly. She continued, “I wouldn’t try it on the space whales, though.”


	2. NATASHA

She’d failed. They all had.

Loki had won. 

Coulson was dead. What was left of SHIELD had been driven underground. Clint was— 

Natasha had never shied away from hard truths before. Clint was mind-controlled by Loki. For all she knew, Loki could have pulled all of SHIELD’s secrets from his head.

If he looked further, he could have found things that not even SHIELD knew about. 

And Natasha had run. When the rest of the so-called Avengers had stayed to finish a losing fight, she had slipped away into the crowds. With a stolen car and a flimsy disguise— a pair of jeans, a flowered tunic, and hair in a messy bun— she left the city. She wasn’t the only one, of course. The roads were a parking lot, full of people who had seen the chaos and decided to get out. 

Natasha already had too much red in her ledger— too much to ever dream of wiping out. But if she could get to Iowa in time, she could do this one thing right. She could save Laura and Cooper and Lila from the Chitauri. 

* * *

The drive was normally eighteen hours, give or take a few for traffic. Natasha cut it down to fourteen, by breaking every traffic law on the books. She changed cars three times and clothes once. 

By the time she was in Iowa, pulling up a dusty, familiar drive, she was in an old blue pickup truck, wearing a castoff college sweatshirt she’d found in car #2.

The gate was closed. Natasha got out to unlatch it. 

_Click._

Natasha froze. She would have known that sound— the sound of a safety unlatching on a rifle— anywhere. 

It’d be a shame to die from a bullet after surviving aliens.

Taking a breath, she lifted her hands in the air. “It’s me.”

A moment of silence. Then a familiar voice. “Natasha?”

Natasha spun around. Standing there in her old gardening shoes and a faded t-shirt, rifle in hand, was Laura Barton.

The farm was comforting. Familiar. Natasha lived out of safe houses and SHIELD bases, but this was the closest thing she had to a home.

She sat down at the kitchen table, exhausted, and watched Laura place the rifle on top of the cabinets and pour a cup of coffee. 

“Are the kids—” Natasha began.

“Upstairs. Asleep.” Laura set a cup of coffee in front of Natasha. It was a cheap mug, with a truly hideous print of horses on it and a chip on the rim. Natasha loved it; she used it every time she visited.

Laura settled across the table from Natasha, her own coffee in hand. 

She didn’t ask what had happened. Judging by the way she’d squared her shoulders and set her jaw, she already had a guess.

Natasha took a long drink of her coffee and cleared her throat. “Loki can mind control people. Clint was compromised.”

Laura sucked in a breath, closing her eyes. 

Natasha would have felt less guilty about dealing the other woman a physical blow. “I’m sorry.” The words were entirely inadequate, especially with the news she was about to deliver. “There’s a possibility that you and the kids have been compromised.”

Laura tightened her hands around her coffee mug, and rubbed at her wedding ring. Then she let out a breath, opening her eyes.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. We’ve got go-bags in the hall closet. You get those; I’ll grab the kids.”

Half an hour later, the Bartons’ go-bags were piled in the back of Laura’s SUV. Natasha had hastily assembled her own bag from Laura’s belongings, and picked up a few of Clint’s weapons that he’d hidden around the house. Laura had packed a bag full of snacks and shuffled Lila and Cooper, both still in their pajamas, downstairs and into the backseats.

“I’ll drive,” Laura said. “You need sleep.”

Natasha glanced at the Chitauri flying overhead and grimaced. But Laura was right; she hadn’t slept in over a day. “Alright.”

She’d closed her eyes, and was about to drift off when she was interrupted.

“Are we going in any particular direction, or…”

Eyes still closed, Natasha tried to think. Where could they even go? Was there any place that was safe from aliens, from an Asgardian with mind control powers?

None of her safe houses were going to cut it. And her list of friends was short, but the list of people she’d trust with Clint’s family was even shorter.

“Malibu,” she finally said.


End file.
